La Donald is running for President ......... Seriously

So Donald Trump, the comb over that walks like a man, has announced his candidacy for President . Well technically Donald has announced his intention to seek the Republican presidential nomination in 2016 but you know what I mean, in fact he's even printed the buttons, because we all know you can't be taken seriously as a candidate unless you have buttons.

There are a bunch of problems with Trump's campaign starting with the fact that while he is a "bad hair" billionaire he's also given a bunch of folks haircuts on the way there.

Trump has declared corporate bankruptcy four different times and while some will vigorously defend Chapter 11 as "just sound business" there are many others that feel four times is a tad excessive. Still one of the more interesting sidelines of Trump's announcement is that as a candidate he will have to file a detailed financial disclosure which means people will finally get a good luck at how much he is really worth . During his announcement speech, wildly cheered by actors making $50 each to do so, Donald brandished a one page net worth summary that placed his personal worth at $8.7 billion, more than double Forbes magazines estimate of $4.1 billion, but really we aren't here to quibble over a measly $4.6B discrepancy, suffice to say La Donald is, as he said, "really, really rich".

Getting past Trump's questionable business ethics the two biggest issues I have are that he has never held office, I mean never, and that may be a bit of an issue, but still running the country is much like running a business and he's had great success there, notwithstanding those four bankruptcies of course. Still Schwarzenegger had no experience before he was elected Governor of California and we all know how ell that turned out, though really Arnie was no worse than the previous Republican Governors . However in today's vast and varied political landscape maybe the board room philosophy can work.

But the biggest problem with Trump is that he's a big fat liar . I know that's often not an uncommon flaw among politicians but Donald is, to take his own phrase, a "really, really big liar". Since his announcement the disclaimers have been coming out of the woodwork, CBS news launched a piece detailing Trump's problems with the truth using data gathered by FactCheck.org and while it may have come as a surprise to some the lies had already been well documented over the years by the excellent site PoliticalFact.com, a site maintained by the Tampa Bay Times newspaper which regularly judges the merits of American broadcaster and politicians statements and grades them on a scale that goes from "True" to "Pants on Fire". As you can see the site has researched some nineteen different statements by Trump over the years, two reached the giddy heights of "Mostly True" while thirteen fell under the "False" or "Pants on Fire" rating.

Now I don't honestly think Donald Trump has any chance to win the Republican nomination but the concept of severely right wing billionaires actually running for office rather than just bankrolling the Republican party does change the dynamics a bit. In the mean time the Koch brothers will still be able to toss one of these guys at the electorate in 2016, and they all have better hair than Donald.